Explainer
Why does my neighbour have power and I don't?
How electricity actually reaches your house in an Indian city, what a “feeder” is, and why — on a hot evening — the lights come back at your cousin's place two streets away while yours stay off.
Power Watch · Updated 4 September 2026 · 7 min read
Power Watch started with a visit to an electricity office. One of us had spent a week of summer evenings without supply while the lane behind ours stayed lit, and finally went to the discom's sub-division office to ask why. The engineer on duty didn't pull up a screen. He pointed at a whiteboard with feeder names on it and explained, quite openly, how the evening actually worked.
When a transformer in the area started running too hot, they would switch off one of the feeders hanging off it. When people on that feeder rang in to complain, they would switch it back on — and switch off a different feeder to give the transformer the same relief. Then that area would call. Round and round, until the load dropped late at night and the transformer cooled down. No schedule, no announcement, no app. A person, a whiteboard and a phone.
Millions of Indians live inside this loop every summer without ever being told about it. This page explains it, because once you understand what's happening, you can tell whether to wait, whether to call, and what to say when you do.
How electricity reaches your switchboard
Power arrives in your city at high voltage and is stepped down at a grid substation — typically to 33 kV, then 11 kV. From the 11 kV side, several feeders leave the substation. A feeder is simply one outgoing line, with its own switch, serving a slice of the city. Along each feeder sit distribution transformers — the grey boxes on poles or in fenced enclosures — which step the supply down to the 230 V that reaches your house.
So your electricity has an address: substation → feeder → transformer → your meter. Your neighbour two houses down almost certainly shares all of it with you. Your neighbour across a main road, or at the end of a long lane, may share none of it. Streets are not the unit of supply. Feeders are.
Why the power gets rotated, not just cut
A transformer is rated for a certain load. On a 45 °C evening when every air-conditioner and cooler on the feeder is running, that load can exceed the rating. Transformers don't fail instantly when overloaded — they get hot, and the hotter the oil inside runs, the faster the insulation ages. Push one hard for long enough and it burns out, which means a whole area off for a day or more while a replacement is trucked in.
Faced with that, an engineer with three feeders and one hot transformer does the obvious thing: sheds part of the load. Switch off feeder B, the transformer drops back under its rating, the oil cools. But the people on feeder B have paid for electricity too, so after a while — or after enough calls — B comes back and A goes off instead. This is rotational load management, and in many discoms it is still done by hand, feeder by feeder, on the judgement of the shift staff.
It is not the same as the load shedding you read about in the news, where a state doesn't have enough generation and cuts whole districts on a published timetable. Rotation is local: your substation, your transformer, your evening. That's why there's no schedule to look up, and why the 1912 operator often can't tell you when it will end. They may not know either.
Fault, planned shutdown, or rotation? How to tell
| Clue | Fault | Planned shutdown | Load rotation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who's affected | Your lane, or one transformer's worth of houses | Named areas, listed in advance | A whole feeder — several colonies at once |
| When | Any time, often after a storm or a bang | Daytime, usually 10 am – 5 pm | Peak load — summer evenings and nights |
| How long | Until someone comes and repairs it | The announced window | 30 min – 2 hrs, then back, then off again |
| Neighbours | Nearby lanes on the same feeder are fine | Also off, if listed | Alternate with you through the evening |
| What helps | Report it — nobody comes until you do | Nothing; plan around it | Report it and count the hours (see below) |
The single most useful thing you can learn is whether the houses around you are out too. That is exactly what the Power Watch live map exists to show: if your area is a lone pin, suspect a fault and call; if the whole neighbourhood is lit up with reports, you're probably in a rotation and the call will be about getting counted, not about getting a lineman.
What to actually do when the lights go out
- Check your own MCB first. If the main switch has tripped, nothing outside your house is wrong.
- Check the street, then the map. A quick look at the live map tells you whether it's you, your lane, or your feeder.
- Report it — and ask for the complaint number. Call 1912 or your discom's own line (each discom page lists them). Write the number down. Without it you have no record and no basis for compensation.
- Add it on Power Watch too. Your neighbours get to see they're not alone, and over weeks the pattern of your feeder becomes visible — which is the evidence that gets a transformer upgraded.
- If it keeps happening, escalate. Repeated cuts on one feeder are a Standards-of-Performance issue. Each discom has a Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum and each state an Electricity Ombudsman; the discom pages here list the steps.
Common questions
Why does my neighbour's house have electricity when mine doesn't?
You are most likely on different 11 kV feeders or different distribution transformers. A street can be split between two feeders, and during summer load management the discom switches feeders off in turn — so one side of the road has power while the other waits.
Does calling 1912 bring the power back faster?
If it is a fault (a blown fuse, a fallen wire, a burnt transformer), yes — nobody will be sent until someone reports it. If it is load rotation, your complaint may get your feeder switched back on, but another area will be switched off in its place. The complaint still matters: it is counted, and a feeder with many complaints gets prioritised for upgrades.
How can I tell a fault from load shedding?
A fault is usually sudden, local (your lane or your transformer only) and stays off until repaired. Load rotation comes and goes in blocks of 30–120 minutes, hits whole areas at a time, and your neighbours' supply alternates with yours. A planned shutdown is announced in advance, usually in the daytime, for maintenance.
Am I entitled to compensation for long power cuts?
Under the Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020, every State Electricity Regulatory Commission sets Standards of Performance, and discoms must compensate consumers when they fail them — including for outages beyond a set duration. The thresholds, amounts and how automatically it is paid differ by state; your discom's page on Power Watch links to the regulator.
Is the power out where you are right now?
Report it in 30 seconds. No login. Your report appears on the map immediately, so the next person on your feeder knows it isn't just them.
Know someone who asks this every summer? Send it to them.
This explainer is based on how distribution networks are described in Indian discom and regulator documents, on conversations with distribution staff, and on our own reporting. Practices vary between discoms and are changing as SCADA and automated feeder switching roll out. If you work in distribution and something here is wrong or out of date, please tell us.